Robert J. Robbins is a biologist, an educator, a science administrator, a
publisher, an information technologist, and an IT leader and manager who
specializes in advancing biomedical knowledge and supporting education
through the application of information technology.
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Robbins holds BS, MS, and PhD degrees in the life sciences. He served
as a tenured faculty member in the Zoology and Biological Science
departments at Michigan State University. He is currently exploring
the intersection between genomics, microbial ecology, and biodiversity
— an area that promises to transform our understanding of the
biosphere.

Educator

Robbins has extensive experience in college-level education: At MSU he
taught introductory biology, genetics, and population genetics. At
JHU, he was an instructor for a special course on biological database
design. At FHCRC, he team-taught a graduate-level course on the
history of genetics. At Bellevue College he taught medical
informatics.

Administrator

Robbins has been involved in science administration at both the
federal and the institutional levels. At NSF he was a program officer
for database activities in the life sciences, at DOE he was a program
officer for information infrastructure in the human genome project. At
the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, he served as a vice
president for fifteen years.

Technician

Robbins has been involved with information technology since writing
his first program as a graduate student. At NSF he was the first
program officer for database activities in the life sciences. At JHU
he held an appointment in the CS department and served as director of
the informatics core for the Genome Data Base. At the FHCRC he was VP
for Information Technology.

Publisher

While still at Michigan State, Robbins started his first publishing
venture, founding a small company that addressed the short-run
publishing needs of instructors in very large undergraduate classes.
For more than 20 years, Robbins has been operating The Electronic Scholarly Publishing Project,
a web site dedicated to the digital publishing of critical works in
science, especially classical genetics.

Speaker

Robbins is well-known for his speaking abilities and is often called
upon to provide keynote or plenary addresses at international
meetings. For example, in July, 2012, he gave a keynote address at the
Global Biodiversity Informatics Congress, sponsored by GBIF and held
in Copenhagen. The slides from that talk can be seen HERE.

Facilitator

Robbins is a skilled meeting facilitator, able to keep discussions
moving through complex issues. He prefers a dynamic approach, in which
part of the meeting involves breakout groups that are created by the
participants in real time: anyone can propose a break out group;
anyone can choose to attend any breakout group. The groups with the
most interested parties are convened. All attendees together later for
reports.

Designer

Robbins has been engaged with photography and design since the 1960s,
when he worked for a professional photography laboratory. He now
prefers digital photography and tools for their precision and
reproducibility. He engages in graphic design as a hobby.

Reprints and preprints of publications, slide presentations,
instructional materials, and data compilations written or
prepared by Robert Robbins. Most papers deal with
computational biology, genome informatics, using information
technology to support biomedical research, and related matters.

ResearchGate is a social networking site for scientists and
researchers to share papers, ask and answer questions, and
find collaborators. According to a study by
Nature
and an
article in
Times Higher Education
, it is the largest academic
social network in terms of active users.